Sinking to the Sky
by myshipsaresunk
Summary: "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain." Wanda and Pietro Maximoff realise the true meaning of those words as the Battle of Sokovia bears down on them. One-Shot.


Disclaimer: I do not own Avengers: Age of Ultron, nor do I own any of the characters. This is purely a work of fiction, not meant to break any rules or to gain money.

Rating: T for violence

Author's Note: This is a one-shot focusing on Wanda and Pietro during the Battle of Sokovia. The quote is from _Batman: The Dark Knight_ which I recently watched (I'm a traitor, I know). I felt it applied to them in some ways and in some ways didn't, but I want to hear what you think about it. The title of this piece is from an Imagine Dragons' song, _Clouds._ Also, parts of this story rely on the imaginative thinking that Wanda and Pietro has a sort of twin telepathic link or whatever. Enjoy :)

Sinking to the Sky

 _"You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."_

Wanda crouches in the half-wrecked house, her hands covering her ears and her head, tears streaming down her face. "This is all my fault," she whimpers to herself, repeating it over and over again like a mantra. "This is all my fault."

And it's true. It's an ugly and dark truth, one that rips the life and courage from Wanda. If she hadn't ever agreed to let von Strucker experiment on her and her brother, if they hadn't blindly followed Ultron like lost puppies, believing him to speak only the truth and trusting him, if they hadn't ever turned the Avengers into children, battling their worst fears without a shield to protect them, if they had just _stayed with each other_ and _protected each other_ , then none of this would have ever happened.

It isn't so. This story of Wanda's and Pietro's, it's a tragedy. A classic tragedy, taken right out of a textbook. The hero falls and falls again, but continues to pick themselves up and advance toward the climax of the novel. Right when everything is happening and the hero is supposed to face their flaw and realise it, right when everything is supposed to go the right way the hero fails, and instead loses.

Except Wanda has never been the hero. This whole story full of plot twists and turns has dealt her the role of the antagonist. Over and over again she has faced the protagonists and won, beating them down and leaving them to pick up the pieces.

And now, right when she realises the real antagonist, Ultron, has been lying to her all along, has been misguiding her, now she is too late. The city is rising only to fall, flying high only to sink; and no matter what she does, it's too late. Even the Avengers alone cannot fight against the threat that is about to bring the extinction of humans to life. A genocide, just like her ancestors experienced years ago at the hands of Hitler. Only this time she's the one who has brought it upon billions of innocent lives.

So her story, and that of her brother, isn't a real tragedy. Maybe for the Avengers it is, but not for her. She's the antagonist, the villain, and they always are defeated in the end. And maybe she wishes she had made different choices, and maybe she would go back and change it all if she could, but she can't. It's too late, and now she's going to die here, surrounded in the rubble that could be that of her old home in which her parents died in, the rubble that brought to life a bitterness and anger that could not be sated, and the origins of a villain that is now regretting everything.

But what if this isn't the end? One of the Avengers, Hawkeye, is kneeling in front of her. He's telling her that it doesn't matter if its her fault. It doesn't matter whose fault it is, all that matters is how this story ends. She can still rise up, and she can still be a hero.

"You step out that door," Clint says, pointing to the barely intact frame, "You're an Avenger."

Wanda knows, deep down, that she won't survive this battle. She won't get out of here alive. But maybe she can still do some good. She can be the nemesis of this story, the villain-turned-good, a hero. She can die a hero instead of living a villain.

So Wanda takes him up on his words. She picks herself back up, channeling her anger and frustration into a powerful force. She doesn't step out of that door, she _explodes_ out of the door, her hands thrusting hexes out towards Ultron's minions, her eyes red with fury and power. She is a storm, a raging fire, and no one can stop her. Maybe she won't come out of this alive, and maybe she won't be able to save the world, but at least she can die a hero and not a villain.

She fights, finding power inside of her that she hadn't found before. She channels it all at the robot who betrayed her, the one who turned her into a monster. He never apologised for his actions, did he? Well, she'll make him. She'll make him beg for mercy. And afterwards she'll die, but she'll die a hero.

* * *

Pietro has been lied to, betrayed, and coerced into becoming the villain. He never wanted this, never wanted this for Wanda nor himself. It is his job to protect them, his job to make sure they're making the right choice, but somewhere along the line things went wrong and he has ended up here. Here, where he's fighting to prevent a catastrophe he made possible.

Sure, he'd made a good choice to fight against Ultron, but it has come too late. Luckily the Avengers have friends, influential people who are evacuating the city so they can blow it up before it suddenly falls crashing back to the earth, destroying the lives of billions. Still, he doesn't expect that he'll get off the city. He knows he'll die, but it's all he can do to protect these people. This is war, and he's been conditioned, trained, _bred_ for war and for fighting.

That's why, when he hears the woman's cry, when he realises that there's still one unevacuated person on the island, he doesn't hesitate to run, faster than the speed of sound and light, to go help that person. A little boy he sees, struggling. And there's Clint, helping him out, lifting him to safety. Except Ultron is in a hijacked quinjet and is spraying machine gun fire everywhere, trying in a last, desperate move, to anihilate the Avengers. And if someone doesn't help Barton, who's now putting the boy protectively under him, putting his life on the line for a random but innocent boy, then he's going to die.

Pietro knows even before he does it that this is how he'll go. He acted as the villain for too long to live a hero's life, but at least he can die a hero. Maybe everyone will know his name, or maybe no one will know, but he'll know, and above all else Wanda will know. He can finally stop hiding the ugly truth of his bad acts, because whatever bad things he did in the past doesn't matter. It's about the destination, about where the journey ends. And his journey ends with him being a hero.

He runs forward, flipping a car up so that Wanda doesn't think he just completely abandoned her. That will just crush her. Sure, his death will, too, but he suspects she won't get out of this alive, either. At least not mentally. The burdens of all they've done, the emotional toll-it wears on a person.

A sudden irony occurs to Pietro as he waits for the inevitable bullets to hit him. While the city is flying only to sink, Pietro is sinking only to fly. He's dying, only to rise to the sky and become a hero.

Then the bullets fly straight through the body of the upturned car, embedding themselves deep into Pietro. He doesn't cry out, doesn't make a sound, because he knew it will end this way. He stands in his defensive position for a moment more, his body still not processing the pain and damage. In front of him Clint turns around, confused, wondering why he is still alive.

And when the Avenger sees what has happened to this kid, pain and grief clouds his eyes. Pietro doesn't want to die looking into the eyes of a saddened, burdened man, so he forces his lips up in a smile. "You didn't see that coming?" he asks.

It's his unspoken words to Wanda that speak volumes more. _I died a hero, sister._

* * *

Wanda hears her brother's words, and her face fractures, grief and sorrow birthing from the hole in her where anger formerly resided. She doesn't want this pain, never wants it again. She wants it out, gone, and she wants her brother back.

Her sorrow and sadness follow her orders to be gone, and it leaves her in a flash of red energy hexes, flooding the remains of the church and tearing apart all of the robots who mean to do her harm. She falls to her knees, her heart shattering into billions of pieces that will never fit right again.

Feelings leave her, and soon she's the monster Ultron wanted to her be all along. An unfeeling, cruel, heartless monster-only she's on the side of the Avengers, not on Ultron's team. He turned her into this monster, so she'll turn it against him.

"Wanda," Ultron gasps. "If you stay here, you'll die."

"I just did," Wanda replies. She always knew it would end this way, and so did Pietro. They always knew it would end here in Sokovia right where it started years ago when Stark's missile killed their parents. She always knew, so she'd stay here when it blew up into countless pieces.

 _Better to die a hero, right, brother?_


End file.
